As embryology is a science of the nineteenth century, so also is
histology, the science of tissues. Its pioneer was Bichat, but its
real foundations were not laid till Schwann and Schleiden formulated
the conception of the 'cell,' and proved that all animals and plants
were composed of cells. What Oken had only guessed at they now proved,
that there are very minute form-elements of life which build up all the
parts of animals and plants or produce them by processes of secretion.
New light was thus shed on embryonic development, and this gradually
led to the recognition of the fact that the egg, too, is a cell, and
that development depends on a cell-division process in this egg-cell.
This led further to the conception of many-celled and single-celled
organisms, and so on to many items of knowledge to speak of which here
would carry us too far.
For it is not my intention to attempt a complete review of the
development of biology in the nineteenth century, or even in the
period which we have mentioned as devoted to detailed research; it
is rather my desire to convey a general impression of the enormous
extent and many-sidedness of the progress that was made in this time.
Let us therefore briefly recall the entirely new facts which were
brought to light in this period with regard to the reproduction of
animals. Asexual reproduction by budding and division was already
known, but parthenogenesis is a discovery of this period, and so also
is alternation of generations, so far-reaching in its bearing on
general problems. It was first observed (1819) by Chamisso in Salpa,
then by Steenstrup in Medusæ and trematodes, and was later made fully
clear in its most diverse forms and relations by the researches of
Leuckart, Vogt, Kölliker, Gegenbaur, Agassiz, and other illustrious
investigators. Reproduction by heterogony, too, which occurs in
many crustaceans, and in aphides and certain worms, was recognized
at that time, and in the sixties Carl Ernst von Baer added to the
list precocious reproduction, or pædogenesis, which is illustrated in
certain insects which reproduce in the larval state.
This may suffice to convey some idea of the great mass of new, and in
some cases startling facts previously unguessed at, which were then
brought to light in the department of animal biology alone. To this
must be added the vast increase in the number of known species and
varieties, their distribution on the earth, and all this, _mutatis
mutandis_, for plants also. Nor can we omit to mention the rapidly
growing number of fossil species of animals and plants.
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